Friday, November 14, 2008

Sometimes when you take a photo, its either good in some areas, and bad in others. This is usually because of over or under exposure to light in the scene, and there isn't much you can do about it with one photo.

This is where high dynamic ranging comes in. The main concept of this is that you take multiple photos of exactly the same scene, but using different exposures. Then, a special piece of software analyzes all the photos then merges them together, using the clearest selections of the image for each part.

In the end, what results is a clear image with outstanding results most of the time, and a photo with no over exposures or under exposures. I decided to try it out, took out a camera, positioned on our balcony, took three pictures with different exposures.

There are many different software that merge photos into high dynamic range photos, but by far the best - according to the Internet folk - was Photomatix. I tried it out and it gave far better results than when I tried in Photoshop CS3.

All in all, these are the results. First photo is the three photos before merging. The second is when Photomatix works its magic on the three photos. And the third is the HDR photo after a few touching up on Photoshop. Now, go out now and try it your self.